The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2)

by Courtney Lane

  My core rang more sensitive than it usually did…rendering me on the verge of a climax quickly.

  I rocked harder, making him curse my name. The need to have him come with me drove my relentless pace. My sex began to vibrate with pleasure. A debilitating rush worked from my sex and moved up my spine, sending a tingle to the back of my head. I collapsed back against his body, too tired to move.

  Resting his chin on the curvature of my neck, he slipped his hands down to my clit. He sank his teeth into my shoulder and slapped my clit with his open palm.

  “Aye,” I yelped.

  “We’re not done until I come, and you come on my cock…and in my mouth a few more times.” Standing, he cradled my body, scooping me into his arms. He fully stepped out of his bottoms that pooled at his ankles, and traveled upstairs with me in his arms.

  Placing me down on the bed in our bedroom, he completely undressed me and what little was left on his body was removed. Our bodies intertwined and tangled with one another on the bed. His teeth lightly sank into my lips as his hands provoked my sensitive nipples.

  Raking his lips down my neck, he continued to kiss his way down my body until his mouth surrounded my areolas. His lips and tongue toyed with my nipples, making me squirm underneath him. He rolled my lower half to the side, my back remained flat against the bed. Hovering over me at arm’s length, he watched me with an intense fire in his eyes. I reached up, fingering his biceps as they worked to hold his upper body apart from me. Sinking his teeth into his bottom lip, he grabbed his erection and entered me.

  The piercing look in his eyes made me shiver. The feeling of him inside me, filling me, sent shockwaves to every nerve. I clasped my hand to his jawline, my eyelids drawing heavy as he rocked me in long, steady strokes. With his body crouched forward, he quickened the pace of his strokes. His groin slapped loudly against my behind.

  Balling the sheets in my fists, I shut my eyes, feeling a second rush pending and more explosive than the first.

  He leaned in my ear and bit it. “Open your eyes, baby. I want to see in those doll-eyes how good this cock is making you feel.” He continued to glide in and withdraw from me at a slow, methodic pace.

  I gazed at him, barely able to comply. His pace sent my body into a constant state of ecstasy. The friction moved me in a crazy way. My body melded back against the bed as the electricity shocked me cold. I relented, clenching around his girth on the verge of a climax.

  He rocked me harder, his eyes nearly closing. “That’s it. Come all over this cock, baby.”

  As he rocked me strongly, slapping his groin against the side of my behind, I tensed before releasing into intemperate convulsions.

  He grew rigid as he pounded me, sending my body into a constant climatic state.

  “Ah, fuck, Nikki.” He continued to thrust inside me between sexually charged groans. “Your tight, juicy pussy going to strain the cum out of my cock.” Hot warmth filled me, making me melt with him. We both fell still, our arms firmly around each other, our heavy breathing patterns almost in sync.

  The stillness only lasted for a moment before he slipped down my body and manipulated my sex with his expert mouth.

  “Nik?” Eric called sweetly as his hand ran up my naked legs.

  In the calm post-coital aftermath, my thoughts continued to discomfort me and prevented my body from succumbing to my exhaustion. I moved my head to look at him as he lay next to me. There was a seriousness in his eyes that pushed my fear to the limit.

  “Don’t do that,” he whispered, fingering my lips. “It’s not as bad as you think it is. I get that fucking you isn’t a cure. It’s complicated. I have to keep things from you to protect you.”

  Fully turning around to face him, I shoved my hand underneath my pillow. I thumbed the edge of the black Egyptian cotton pillowcase, trying to swallow down his unexpected admission. “It’s not working,” I said, my voice hoarse and quiet. “It never works. Keeping things from me only makes things worse. Let me in, Eric. I can handle it now.”

  His palm rested along the side of my jaw, his eyes full of apprehension. “Okay,” he swallowed carefully. “What do you want to know, Nik?”

  I searched his eyes, watching the uncharacteristic apprehension increase. I reached down and brushed my hand down the side of the sloping curve at his waist. My focus remained glued to the tattoo. Taking a moment, I touched his bicep, fingering the slightly raised texture of the intricate angel wing tattoo. The tension in his face was perceptible. He grimaced, almost as if my touch hurt him. “Can we talk about that?” I asked, withdrawing my hand. “Not sure why I’m asking. I can put things together. The juvenile record. The fact that your uncle was a Sr. and not a Jr. Is that a gang tattoo, Eric? Were your parents’ deaths part of the jumping in process? Did you lose your cousin in some kind of gang war?”

  He sat up, giving me his broad, muscular back to view as he teetered on the edge of the bed.

  Bolting out of bed, I stood opposite Eric. In my haste, the blood rushed through my body a little too quickly, causing a nauseous sensation. “You said I could ask you anything,” I retorted, my voice straining to raise its pitch due to my taxed vocal chords. “What you really should’ve said is only the questions you want to answer, which as usual, are few and far between.”

  He slammed up and turned around, staring back at me with the full extent of his ire. “Excuse the fuck out of me if you think I killed my parents for something as stupid as a fucking gang initiation. No. I killed them because they did nothing when my stepbrother started raping me night after night when I turned twelve. He raped me so much—so fucking brutally once—I had to have surgery. Surgery my father wouldn’t pay for. He wouldn’t even take me to the goddamn hospital. He pretty much told me to walk it off. I was in pain for weeks.

  “If that didn’t top it off, come to find out my stepmother knew from the fucking get-go what he was doing to me. One time, she fucking smoked a joint, smiling from ear to ear while she took in the view of me being raped by her goddamn son. She did it to punish me because I didn’t keep my room as clean as she wanted it to be.

  “I killed them, because I wanted it to stop. Because every time I tried to report it, my father’s friends in the police department laughed at me. Because when Tamala decided to report it, it got worse. He was a heavy, stupid fuck that overpowered me. I never could fight him off. Was so fucking tired of being in pain—” His breath caught, preventing him from continuing.

  The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice differed from the first time. I could hear it with every ounce of his being. His family broke him.

  “I was tired of being his bitch. Their bitch.”

  Weeping with my heart completely obliterated, I slipped into his tailored shirt strewn across the wingback chair. Heavy sobs I tried to fight shook me to the core.

  “What the fuck are you crying for?” he bellowed from behind me. “It didn’t happen to you. Shit, the worse your father did was threaten to send you to the psych ward, or foster care.”

  “You don’t exactly know what my father did or didn’t do,” I remarked without turning around. “You only know what my mother told you, and she didn’t know everything.” I slunk back on the bed. “There are a lot of things that have happened to me—things I’ve never told you.”

  I heard him take a big, loud, wavering breath. “I—” His tone fell into a remorseful stillness. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I slipped off the bed and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I stared in the mirror, taking in the constant sadness stuck inside my large brown eyes that never seemed to want to go away. After hearing more pieces from Eric’s horrible past, the sorrow increased exponentially. No one could’ve survived the horrible things he went through unscathed. His life was full of every tragedy imaginable, and it seemed to have never stopped or slightly dissipated its effect on him until he met me. His past had found a way to severely affect his present, and for some reason, it seemed prepared to hurt me t
he most.

  “Nik?” Eric called out from the other side of the door.

  “Go away!” I yelled through the door.

  He didn’t listen, and I had forgotten to lock the door.

  I gazed at his reflection in the mirror with indifference. “You can’t fuck your way to forgiveness, so maybe you should just get out.”

  He rolled his shoulders and took my hand, forcing me to turn around. “I couldn’t if I tried, you kind of drained my cock dry. Maybe in an hour?”

  “Damn it,” I whispered, wiping my tears with the back of my hands as a smile crept over my lips. “Don’t take my smile as a good sign.”

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “What do you want me to do? Cut out my heart? Should I use the brand spanking new box of razor blades you stowed away behind the loose tile on the wall?”

  My mouth gaped at him in shock.

  He reached up above the medicine cabinet to what I thought was my secret hiding place. He retrieved a blade, fingering it in his hands.

  Shifting my weight, I folded my arms. “Yeah, um…best of luck with that.”

  He shrugged, removing the cardboard and cut into his chest. Cutting this way and that way, he drew blood until he scraped a jagged little heart into his flesh. His expression barely showed a hint of pain as he scarred his skin. “There. Does that satisfy you? Do I deserve your forgiveness now?”

  Slack-jawed, I didn’t know how to respond.

  His eyelids drew heavily down his eyes and his jaw firmed. “Do you want to call me crazy?”

  My eyes darted to the bleeding wound, the marring of his once flawless light honey-toned skin. “That would be too obvious,” I retorted.

  I shifted my feet across the marble tile until my body pressed against his completely nude form. “That’s going to scar.”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” he rasped. Unblinking, he peered at me while fingering my chin between his thumb and index finger. He dropped his hold and slanted back against the wall. “My father was first generation American. His parents came here illegally from Colombia. He…changed his name when he went to college. His real name?” He glanced at the mirror as he spoke with a perfect accent, “Hernan Aceves-Meíja.” His eyes found their way back to me. “The arguments he used to have with his cousin, Victor, told me Eamon changed it because he had some deluded notion it would make people less nervous. Mention the name to people in the know, and they’ll run away in fucking fear. I guess at first, he ran away from the family business. Obviously, he changed his mind about the straight and narrow after he opened Brae Industries.” He rolled his shoulders, slipping deeper against the counter.

  “My mother…grew up upper middle class. She wanted for nothing. When she started working for my father—being in a relationship with him—her parents didn’t exactly take to it well. I don’t remember much, but I remember one of the arguments she had with them over the phone when I was a kid.” He glanced up at me. “I think you can guess the many reasons as to why they didn’t want anything to do with me, or my mother after she had me.” He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair, allowing his palms to linger at the back of his head. “I couldn’t tell you what drew my mother to my father. I wish I knew. He was a fucking asshole.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t an asshole with her,” I responded with uncertainty. “Or maybe he gave her something she never had—made her feel things she’d never felt before.” I stepped forward, bringing his arms down and interlocking my fingers with his. My blinking slowed as the warm rush of his touch reverberated up my spine. “Having a wealthy upbringing doesn’t exactly mean you want for nothing. It’s tangible, and sometimes your parents lack in providing you with the intangible—the things you need the most. If her parents were hateful enough to judge your father based upon his heritage, and not because of his other—illegal—activities, I wouldn’t put stock into them being perfect parents.”

  “Might’ve been,” he said with enough distance in his voice to read as detachment. “Or she just fell for the version of him that wasn’t real. The guy that didn’t really exist.”

  I searched his melancholic eyes. “Are you sure they weren’t in love at some point, and they destroyed each other because they were too broken to be functional together?”

  For many moments of silence, we locked eyes with one another. The way he scrutinized my face, it seemed he was looking for the right answer. “He never loved her. I have to believe that, because I’d rather not believe what you just said.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Yes, it’s a gang tattoo.” His eyelids popped open, showing an increasingly disconnected part of himself. “I’ve told you enough, don’t you think? Or should I carve your name into my chest, too?”

  I fingered his lips. Tipping up on my toes, I kissed his soft generous lips. “They were monsters. God, Eric. I’m so—”

  “Don’t,” he cut in abruptly. “I don’t need your sympathy. I just need you.” He bent down to meet my height, touching his forehead against mine. “You have to know I couldn’t be without you. Promise I’ll stop trying to fuck it up, if you can promise me the same.”

  I slipped one hand from his grip. Holding up my hand, I crossed my fingers. While I stared at the cut in his flesh, I shook my head. “God…we are so mentally unwell.” The words bled with more sadness than I meant them to. He didn’t seem to catch it, but they held more than one meaning. Two firmly mentally unwell people could not raise a child.

  He slowly smiled. “Isn’t it why we’re so good together?”

  “That…remains to be seen,” I responded quietly.

  The light-hearted moment was quickly exchanged for pragmatism. “It’s my turn.”

  Suddenly thrust out of state of apprehension, my heart began to race. “Your turn for what?”

  He held my head, ensuring I was trapped in his gaze with the way he tilted my head to regard him. “Your father. I need to know everything you remember about him. And I do mean everything, Nik.”

  “I-I don’t know what to say to that. I told you what I remembered.”

  “Are you saying you blocked out some things?”

  I blinked rapidly. “Maybe.”

  “Is that your thing? The thing that fucked you up? Is he the worst thing to ever happen to you, Nik?”

  I shook my head as the sadness swept me.

  “Really?” He raised a brow with interest. “What could be worse than your shitty father?”

  “The day I completely dissociated with the word pride,” I droned.

  He searched my eyes with concern and impending question. “What happened?”

  “I’ve told you about her—the girl from prep school I can’t name because of your way with people who hurt me. I told you how she tormented me for years. Right up until my father died. I—” As the memory shocked my brain, I caught my breath before it escaped me completely. “I don’t know if I should tell you,” I continued, struggling to find the words, “because you’ll try to find her and make her kill herself.”

  He took in a deep breath. “Goddamn it, Nikki. Just tell me. I won’t touch her. Promise.”

  “Your promises are shit.”

  He rolled his eyes, strengthening his grip on my head. “Nikki,” he warned through a growl.

  “She…did a lot of things to me. The worst of it was when she tied me to the shower guide bar using her and her friend’s spare bathing suits. Because everyone was scared of her, no one said anything to stop her. I never screamed. I never called out for help. It happened on a Friday. Thanks to my parents being out of town and forgetting to check up on me, I wasn’t found until Sunday night.”

  Dropping his head, he muttered a string of curse words under his breath. “Why didn’t you scream your head off, stand up to her, kick her ass…something?”

  “She had a lot of friends, when I had no one. And I was never strong enough.” I shrugged. “I’m still not.”

  “Don’t do that.” His eyes shot up at me, examining my face with annoyance. “Don’
t let people who are shit take that away from you. All that you’ve been through? You are stronger than you know, my twisted angel. Trust me on that.”

  “Then, why do I feel like I’m not—especially when I’m with you?”

  His eyes turned impassive as he retorted with a biting shortness, “The feeling is mutual.”

  “Eric I…” I left my words to dangle. I wanted to confess but I was too afraid of the outcome. When I looked into his eyes, I couldn’t find what I needed in order to tell him exactly what Preston had done to me. “Am I the worst thing to happen to you?”

  “Yes,” he responded quickly.

  It didn’t matter how softly the one word rolled off his tongue, the ground swallowed me whole.

  “It’s not for the reasons you’re thinking,” he added quickly, bringing me back from the cusp of becoming devoured by my own wormhole of sadness. “I’ve…built this persona over the carcass of who I used to be. The man who gets things done, no matter how fucked up they were. After meeting you, the two sides of me are fighting for the same space.”

  He released his hold on me and leaned back against the counter as he erratically searched my eyes. “The stronger is going to win, and he’s going to hurt you. He wants to hurt you. And I’m not talking about the things I’ve done to you before. Worse. So very fucking much worse.” He cranked his neck and dropped his hands as well as our common eye contact. His hands balled into tight fists as he seemed to struggle with his next words. “I have fantasies about torturing you…in meticulous ways. I’m trying to protect you from the monsters trailing me…but there’s one inside of me you should really be afraid of. One you really haven’t seen. If I were a good guy, I’d let you go before it happened, because I know it’s going to. Thing is, I can’t let you go. Neither side can. Don’t know what the fuck to do about that.”

  Stunned, I searched his eyes, seeing Eric naked and stripped down in a way I’d never seen him before. It was an emotional overture that completely magnetized my heart, pulling me under his dangerous spell.